Lol no shit. But i was wondering if y'all knew the source of the difference in taste.
Looks like Zero has sodium citrate instead of citric acid.
The way I've always understood it is (my dad worked at Coke for 40 years):
- Prior to 1982 Coke was Coke, there was no Diet Coke yet. There was Diet Pepsi and Diet Rite (made by RC) but the only diet soda from Coke was Tab, which was(/is) a diet cola but tastes a little different than Coke even beyond the fact that it's diet
-In 1982, they came out with Diet Coke. The idea is that it would taste like Coke but diet like Tab. The thing is, the base recipe turned out to be different than either one, and it wound up being a THIRD taste.
-However, it was a huge smash hit, so big that in 1985 they decided to see what the base Diet Coke recipe would taste like with sugar (well, HFCS) instead of Diet Coke's saccharine. Internally, they decided it was amazing and the taste tests backed it up. So amazing that they famously decided to replace the main Coke with this wondrous new concoction made of the Diet Coke base recipe/not diet and call it "New Coke" or "Coke II".
-As everyone knows, that decision was a disaster and they switched back within a year, making their stock go up more than ever. So actually not a disaster at all. But they left Diet Coke alone, and it still to this day uses the "New Coke" base recipe.
-20 years later in 2005, they decided to try the opposite of what happened in 1985 (and really another stab at what they tried in 1982 that resulted in the happy accident of Diet Coke): Just put diet stuff instead of sugar in the original Coke recipe. Also, they marketed it toward men.
So, TLDR: Diet Coke is the diet version of the infamous 1985 "new coke" (although new coke was based on Diet Coke); Coke Zero is the diet version of classic Coke.
As far as describing how the tastes differ, 🤷♂️. They're a little different, both kinda gross... Diet Coke always tastes a little more like Pepsi to me.
